An increasing number of organizations are moving towards radical reductions in cycle time as they move towards rapid business responsiveness and Continuous Delivery. (I’m trying to reduce my personal cycle time, but that’s another issue.) One mantra that seems to help teams and organizations in this quest is, “If it’s hard to do, do it […]

Jeff Patton recently reminded me of two simple strategies for software development that I’ve talked about from time to time—Build Less Software and Start Sooner. I thought I’d follow up on Jeff’s blog and revisit these simple, but powerful strategies. First, managers and executives complain a lot about not delivering software (or any other product […]

Many managers use the mantra, “Do more with less.” At the Agile 2010 conference, Pat Reed from the GAP, who co-presented with me, shortened this mantra to “Do Less.” The theme of our presentation was Value Optimization, determining the highest valued chunks of functionality to implement next—whether those chunks were projects in a portfolio or […]

About The Author

I am an executive consultant with ThoughtWorks, Inc., having spent 30-plus years’ as an IT manager, product manager, project manager, consultant, and software developer. In 2005 I was honored to receive international Stevens Award for outstanding contributions to systems development. Read More …